As optical networks have become increasingly complex, the effective administration of such networks, including to increase efficiency and to reduce error-rates, has become more and more difficult.
Optical networks consist of a number of network elements which may generally be classed as optical components, and optical connections. Optical components process an optical signal either passively or actively, while optical connections, typically fiber-optic cables, transmit the optical signal between optical components.
Today, such optical networks are typically owned and administered by service providers who rent out capacity on the network to client users of the optical network. The administration of these networks is typically conducted by a network administrator employed by the service provider.
To assist the network administrator in viewing the status of the optical network and to identify areas of potential improvement in the performance of the network, the network administrator often makes use of a graphical user interface (GUI) operating on a computer system connected to the optical network. Information is gathered from the network elements by the computer system, and is displayed in the GUI for viewing by the network administrator. Using such GUI's, network administrators can view the status of data transmission over the optical network, improve the efficiency of the network, maximize use of the network elements, and be alerted to, and locate alarms in the network.
One useful view which is often incorporated into an optical network administration GUI is a network topology, namely a graphical representation of the geographic and/or logical structure of the network. Such topologies allow network administrators to easily and quickly understand the interaction between different network elements which form the network. However as the complexity of optical networks has increased, network topologies have become increasingly difficult to read and understand. Often, too many of the network elements making up the optical network are displayed on the network topology. The result is that the network topology becomes cluttered and it becomes very difficult to discern the important network elements and how they are connected. Another negative result is that to allow this dense network topology to be understood, only a small portion of the optical network can typically be displayed at any given time.
Another useful view commonly offered in an optical network administration GUI is an optical components view. Such a view typically displays the optical components located at a given geographic location. However, such optical components views again display too many non-relevant optical components at a given geographic location, and typically do not allow the network administrator to easily view the optical components of interest from more than one geographic location at the same time.
Further, as optical networks have advanced, specialized optical components have been developed to combine a number of individual optical signals (or “channel signals”) into a single multiplexed optical signal (or “muxed signal”) through such techniques as dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM). Thus, although a single optical connection in an optical network can typically only carry a single optical signal, that optical signal may be a muxed signal which has within it a number of separate channel signals which have been combined through multiplexing. Thus, in a sense, the optical connection has within it, a number of optical channels. Although present optical network administration GUI's do have the capability of displaying how optical connections, or a series of optical connections and optical components forming a route, are provisioned for data transmission, such GUI's do not allow network administrators to easily view how individual optical channels on that route have been provisioned for data transmission.
Finally, present optical network administration GUI's have not provided a simple means of viewing assigned routes of data traffic through the optical network, which are supported by a given network element. The identification of such routes is an important step in determining how an error in a given network element may affect data transmission on the network.